H. Berlioz, L`Enfance de Christ, Op. 25, La fuite en Egypte (ouverture)

H. Berlioz, L’Enfance de Christ, Op. 25, La fuite en Egypte (ouverture)
Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8,
1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for
his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande
Messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made great
contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise
on Instrumentation and by utilizing huge orchestral
forces for his works; as a conductor, he performed
several concerts with over 1,000 musicians. At the other
extreme, he also composed around 50 songs for voice
and piano.
At a party thrown in September 1850 by a friend from his Prix de Rome days,
Joseph-Louis Duc (1802 - 1879) - architect of the column in the Place de la
Bastille - Berlioz, perched against the corner of a card-table and ignoring the
game of whist being played thereon, inscribed a small four-part Andantino for
organ in Duc's album and facetiously signed it "Pierre Ducré." For a concert of
the newly formed Société Philharmonique, 12 November, he rewrote the piece
for chorus and small orchestra as Adieu des bergers à la Sainte Famille (the
shepherds' farewell to the Holy Family) - to a text of his own devising, ascribing
the work to "Pierre Ducré, master of music to the Sainte Chapelle, 1679." The
hoax took. And when the work was repeated in December critics praised its
"pure and simple style" while declaring that "Berlioz could never do anything
like that!" Before the year was out he had preceded it with a charmingly severe
fugal overture dans le style ancien, and rounded it off with a tenor solo
narrating the angel-watched rest of the Holy Family at a desert oasis, Le Repos
de la Sainte Famille. Taken together, the three pieces were collectively titled La
Fuite en Égypte and continued to be attributed to the fictional choirmaster of
Sainte Chapelle until the work's publication by Richault in 1852 - the title page
reads "attribué à Pierre Ducré, Maître de Chapelle imaginaire, et composé par
Hector Berlioz." To the work's dedicatee, John Ella, director of the London
Musical Union, Berlioz gleefully recounted the whole business in an open
"correspondance philosophique" reprinted in Les Grotesques de la musique
(1859). Le Repos de la Sainte Famille was first heard in London at a concert of
the Philharmonic Society under Berlioz's direction, while the complete Fuite en
Égypte was given a resplendent première 31 November 1853 in Leipzig by the
Gewandhaus Orchestra, and choral forces drawn from the surrounding region,
under Berlioz's baton. Spurred by the kindness of his Leipzig hosts and the
enthusiasm of Liszt for the new work, Berlioz soon added to La Fuite en Égypte
another panel, L'Arrivée à Saïs, in January 1854, and by July, with Le Songe
d'Hérode, he had completed his trilogie sacrée, L'Enfance du Christ.